Building Bridges: Your
Community and Labor Report
National
Edition
Produced by Ken Nash and Mimi
Rosenberg
******************************************
Finally N.Y. State’s Farmworkers Prevail Over State’s Harvest of Shame
with
Jessica Ramos,
N.Y.S Senator, Chair of Labor
Committee
and
Jose
Chapa, Justice
for Farmworkers Legislative Campaign Coordinator, Rural & Migrant
Ministry
We’ll celebrate and the N.Y.S. Legislature’s
passage of progressive bills, with gains in such diverse areas as tenants’ rights, drivers licenses for undocumented
immigrants and yes finally labor rights for N.Y. farmworkers. Advocates for
farmworkers have been engaged in a decades-long fight for basic labor and human
rights for farm workers since they were exempted from a 1938 federal labor
reform law – relegating them to
a habitual harvest of shame, and deprivation.
"Today we
are correcting a historic injustice, a remnant of Jim Crow era laws, to affirm
that those farmworkers must be granted rights just as any other worker in New
York,” said Sen. Jessica Ramos (D-Queens). Under the new Farmworker Fair Labor
Practices Act farmworkers will now have the
right to unionize and overtime pay as well as the guarantee of at least one day
off per week. Under the new legislation, farmworkers are also eligible
for unemployment insurance, paid family leave and workers’ compensation
benefits.